What the USA needs is a socialized health care plan such as exists in Canada and in most of western Europe. The USA can't get that, however, because it has a public who have been so brainwashed all their lives by fear of socialism...that they are largely incapable of understanding the subject and have absolutely no idea how such a health care plan would work, why it would work, or really anything about it at all.

Obama's so-called health care plan was anything BUT socialism. It was a huge giveaway to the private health care industry in the USA, enabling them to greatly increase their profits.

Public health care shouldn't even have anything to do with profit! It should have to do with giving people needed medical care which should be a CIVIL RIGHT, not something someone profits from.

Other civil rights are things like equal protection under the law...the right of free speech...the right to the religion of your choice (or none at all)...etc.

How would you like it if you could only get police protection by paying the cops $5000 or more in cash any time you might happen to need them? Or how would you like it if your house caught on fire and the fire department said, "Oh, we'll send over our guys and put that fire out...IF you pay us $1,000 in cash when we get there, and write us out a check for another $10,000. The check better not bounce, either, cos if it does, we'll sue you and take your house and every cent you've got. Are we straight on that? Okay. Fine. The fire trucks are on the way."

The reason the police and fire department will help you at present without acting as I have laid it out above is simply this: they are SOCIALIST institutions! They do what they do NOT to make a profit, but to meet a vital and immediate public need that has nothing to do with making a profit for anyone. They are funded through taxes. They treat everyone on an equal basis. No one has to pay them exorbitant fees up front to get their help in an emergency.

That is how medical care should work. A medical problem is an emergency...NOT a chance for someone to make money! It should be funded on an equal basis by every adult citizen through their taxes, and NO one should have to pay one additional red cent to get medical help, because illness is an emergency, just like if your house is on fire or someone is robbing your house and you need the police to stop him.

If everyone funds something on an equal basis, then everyone can easily afford what that costs...because most people AREN'T in need of medical care most of the time. So the cost to each person under a socialized system is affordable. Same as car insurance. Same as house insurance. Same as any kind of insurance. We all pay these things and spread out the cost that way so we can afford it....but only a few of us need to make an insurance claim in any given year...thus we can all afford the cost of such insurance, because it's spread around evenly through basically the whole population.

The American public has been brainwashed for so long by the voices of private industry that they don't get this. That's incredible. But it's true. This amounts to a public which is simply beyond help, as far as I can see, because they are the prisoners of their own insane social mythology...and they don't even know what socialism is!

The plan Obama brought in didn't even vaguely resemble socialism. It resembles a big give-away to profit-based private health care industries. And that's insane. You who are on the Right should be celebrating his wretched Obamacare. It's right up your alley, because it helps the rich in your society get richer.

And if you don't get what I mean about that...well, here's an old article from back then which explains it quite clearly:

The pure greed of Obama's phony health care reform

Read it and weep!

Look, get this: the rest of the world watches what happens in your so-called democracy and shudders with horror. And we can't do a thing about it, because the USA is the most heavily armed nation in the world, the most aggressive military power in the world, and no one can fucking well do a thing about it if the USA decides to invade some country, bomb it into ruins, and take it over. And no one can do a thing about it if a majority of Americans willingly consent to be enslaved by a corrupt oligarchy of wealthy corporates and bankers, and deluded by 2 utterly phony political parties, because they are too brainwashed to even know what's happening to them. This is what the world watches, rather like the world once watched in numb horror at what was happening in Germany in the late 30's. No one can protect you from yourselves. Hell, we can't even protect ourselves from what your government may do. But we hope to survive it.

Note: My comments above are not necessarily directed at most individuals on Mudcat, and you should know that. You're mostly a group of leftist-folkie-intellectual types here. You do not at all represent the mainstream of social thought in the USA. My comments are directed at the USA society in a much more general sense...the common average attitude in the USA...and the common average of your society is living in a dream world where "socialism" is equated with dictatorial Communism of the worst sort. That's just a dream world. It has no connection with reality.

So don't take what I said as being directed at YOU YOURSELF personally. It is not directed at you. It's directed at the common mainstream mentality of your nation, because that common mainstream is what goes along passively with supporting the status quo in the USA, and the status quo is about nothing but ensuring profits for the wealthiest few, keeping the rest of you enslaved, and achieving imperial conquest in the world outside your borders.